Saturday 2 January 2021

The view up the Hill

 We woke up this morning to see large flakes of snow falling past the window. 

There's a good couple of inches now. For the first time this winter,  there's a chance it won't just be washed away by the next shower of rain.

We live in a dip in the ground.  Here, when it snows, you feel surrounded, coccooned. It feels like that too,  I'm sure,  because there's usually no need for us to go out these days.  

The snow plays tricks with  time. The day becomes disconnected from yesterday and connects instead with all the other days when it snowed here. It brings back memories of those days - mainly the memory of a feeling that everything you planned on doing will need to be postponed. It's not always possible,  of course.  Some things have to go ahead come what may but with regard to everything else, it's no bad thing, once in a while. 

Not that we had anything planned today,  what with the pandemic restrictions. There have been many times in the last few months when it felt here as if we'd been 'snowed in', without the snow. 




22 comments:

  1. It certainly looks very pretty.

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    1. It does. Until you try backing the car out! :)

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  2. Being snowed in is a very good analogy for 2020. That is exactly how it felt - and still does and is likely to for some time.

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    1. At least when you're snowed in you can build yourself a snowman!

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  3. It would be the perfect time to spend three months being snowed in. At the moment I am looking for excuses to go out.

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  4. Yes, you summed it up perfectly. We do feel "snowed in" even though it never snows here. It does look beautiful there.

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    1. It does and it is. Let's just hope the epidemic goes the way of the snow by the summer!

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  5. After reading your post and looking at your snow photo and reading the comments, words I read when I was 18 years old and had little experience with snow or life suddenly came to mind vividly from a short story by James Joyce that I read as a freshman in a college English Literature class in 1967.

    "... Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

    Maybe it's time to read the whole story once again. I've returned to it at times over the years, each time with more experience to bring to that memorable short story. The simple words that have stayed in my heart with its often mysterious emotions all these years are:

    "... snow was general all over Ireland ..."

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    1. The whole story, or all of Dubliners. That said, one good thing about books of short stories is that you can dib in and out of them!

      I keep meaning to watch John Huston's film of The Dead.

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  6. It makes everything look so pretty. I'm glad you got your wish. X

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    1. It does. And it certainly slows down the pace of life, which is usually good!

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  7. I like your description of how the snow plays tricks with time. I love the way snow muffles the sounds giving life outside a hushed feeling. The snow looks beautiful in your picture. We had snow and ice on New Year's Eve and day so our world is white as well.

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    1. For once, I've not been out in it, other than to the bird feeder. I'd forgotten about the effect on the acoustics!

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  8. I'm glad you got your wish for snow. I rarely wish for it, but get it all the same.

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    1. I wouldn't say I exactly wish for it although I can see how I might have given that impression! I do enjoy the magic of it and make the most of it when it does come, though.

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  9. I enjoy how beautiful the snow looks though I don't enjoy everything about it.

    I know what you mean about feeling snowed in without the snow over the past months of lockdown

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    1. I think I can summarise what I like about snow. I like the novelty, the view, building snowmen and snowball fights!

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  10. Exactly!

    Good to "meet" you. Real life is getting more like blogland.

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